By 2018 America’s War on Injustice had entered the doldrums. There seemed to be no inequities left to conquer. The major aquifers of discrimination had been pumped dry. Hate-crime protection had been extended to blacks, Hispanics, mulattos, women, bisexuals, homosexuals, Lesbians, Native Americans, transsexuals, asexuals, transvestites, the transgendered, sadomasochists, pedophiles, and the bestiality lobby (NAMFLA, the North American Man-Fido Love Association). Affirmative action had been so successfully extended that whoe governmental departments were uniformly diverse. The Washington Redksins had been renamed the Federal Folders, and three congressmen had lost office for using the word “Oriental” to refer to Orientals.
Across the country bored adolescents in universities sought something about which to be indignant. Hunting was poor.[amazon asin=0595237134&template=*lrc ad (right)]
Then, thank God, an activist in Swarthmore’s Lesbian Chicana, Gay, and Bicephalous Studies department pointed out that not enough Tloxyproctyls were enrolled in Ivy nurseries. This was genius, though not immediately recognized as such. A collective “Huh?” rang out in progressive circles. No one knew what Tloxyproctyls were. Traffic at Wikipedia rose thirty percent for several days.
It was discovered that the Tloxyproctyls were an obscure tribe of some two dozen mostly naked Indians living in the Amazon rain forest and the Stone Age. They ate only tree leaves and large white grubs found in rotting logs. Their language, unrelated to any other, consisted of twelve words, none of which meant anything. Their intellectual development was approximately that of a cassava root.
Clearly they were victims of discrimination by…by…well, that could be decided later. Now they needed political action. Exactly why was not clear, but did not seem important.
On campus, the best instincts of the Improving Classes roared into action. Goodness raged. Further research showed a shocking lack of ‘Proctyls, as they came to be called by the knowing, almost everywhere. It was just…Wrong. At Wellesley, puzzled co-eds marched for Lesbian and Biramous Tloxyproctyl Rights. Universities established ‘Proctyl quotas. A mad scramble ensued to recruit the unwitting Indians. The campaign was somewhat hampered by the fact that there weren’t any.
More were needed to keep the wheels of justice turning. At Princeton the Department of Black, Transaxle, and Amphibian Studies found a solution: Imputed Tloxyproctyls or, as some called the idea, Inferential Tloxyproctyly. Students of other oppressed [amazon asin=B0078F0G72&template=*lrc ad (right)]categories, such as Lesbian, Gay, Vegetarian, Bicephalous and Transphylum students would be assigned as ‘Proctyls by imputation. The argument was that if one could be transsexual or transgendered, why not trans-ethcnicked?
The noted feminist professor Dr. Cecina Pocilga-Dworkin, whose academic credentials consisted of looking like an orangutan, said, “Race, gender, and ethnicity are socially constructed by white-supremacist capitalists to oppress the black and brown races, which don’t exist because they are social constructs. Since ‘Proctyls would suffer discrimination if there were any, we can appoint proxy Proctyls, and seek redress for the discrimination they would suffer if they existed.” Several upper-middle-class date-rape activists were chosen as stand-ins. They stopped bathing and began eating ersatz white grubs made of sashimi to raise public consciousness of Tloxyproctyl issues.
With support from NPR and Mother Jones, a gala fund-raising masquerade ball was held inWashington. Proceeds were to go to the various organizations that had sprung up to end oppression of ‘Proctyls, none of whom were actually in the United States. It didn’t matter. Justice does not know national boundaries.
The ball was a great success, attracting many prominent figures. Hillary Clinton attended as an aging blonde ruin, and won the prize for most-convincing costume. She said, “Injustice is injustice, whether there is any or not.” Nancy Pelosi came as a slightly decayed cadaver, apologizing that she hadn’t had time to find a costume. “Not even grubs can escape the curse of whiteness,“ she stated, and pledged Congressional funding to find Grubs of Color. Barack Obama arrived disguised as usual as a President. No one was fooled. Barney Frank came as, well, Barney Frank, and gave the keynote address, saying, “I stand hard and fast behind the Tloxyproctyls of [amazon asin=B0078H2BLO&template=*lrc ad (right)]America.”
While the inferred ‘Proctyls did raise ‘Proctyl awareness in the country, mostly by convincing the public that a lot of people were crazy, a vague suspicion continued in academia that funding would be more reliable if based on real Proctyls. Consequently the Anthropology Department at Harvard suggested sending a hunting party to the Amazon Basin with nets. The university’s conservative professor expressed reservations at this. Yet the consensus was that the national interest in equitable treatment of Tlosyproctyls outweighed considerations of their civil rights. Anyway, sanity was a social construct.
Support for ‘Proctyl issues came from unexpected quarters. The Pentagon set up a Department of Tloxyproctyl Acquisition so as to stay ahead of the Chinese. The Secretary of Defense said the Tloxyproctyl Gap represented an existential threat to the United States, as did everything else, and requested a seventy-six billion dollar fighter plane. Thought was given to encouraging the Proctyls to breed, perhaps by offering them strings of brightly-colored glass beads. Maybe their grubs could be doctored with fertility enhancers.
After three weeks in the rain forest, the anthropologists succeeded in gathering up Wunxputl, an actual Tloxyproctyl, who stood four feet nine and weighed eighty-three pounds when he was buck naked, his usual state. When offered a loin cloth, he spent half an hour trying to put it on before giving up due to the unaccustomed complexity, and said, “Gurp.”
On his reaching Harvard it was discovered that “Gurp” was all Wunxputl ever said. Neo-Nazis, racists, and Republicans snickered that Wunxputl was retarded, but Dr. Herzog-Mariposón, head of Indigenous and Native Peoples Studies, pointed out that intelligence was a social construct. He explained that Wunxputll’s silence was just the natural reticence of Native Peoples, who lived at one with Nature. [amazon asin=0595151094&template=*lrc ad (right)] Wunxputl’s continued attempts to climb the curtains of the faculty lounge, said Mariposón, merely represented his desire to share his folkways with a civilization that had lost contact with the natural world. We should be humble, he said, recognize the wisdom of Native Peoples, and Learn from Them.
The retrograde responded with their usual lack of progressive insight. The conservative professor at Harvard said privately that Wunxputl seemed no more benighted than most of the incoming freshmen, though he conceded that these usually did not climb drapes except after major football games.
Having been given a simplified loin cloth, Wunxputl was brought to classes in anthropology, seated at the professor’s desk, and given a banana. He said “Gurp.” The students took extensive notes. A graduate student began a doctoral thesis on the various meanings of the word, which many thought embodied the wisdom of the Tloxyproctyls. The conservative professor agreed that it probably did.
The matter came to a close. The remaining ‘Proctyls had fled deeper into the rain forest and begun hiding in caves to avoid Justice. The Imputed ’Proctyls held a few marches, graduated, and went into I-banking. The conservative professor at Harvard said that the Anthropology Department’s head should be repositioned by a Proctylologist, but was ignored.
